Note 13 — Chapter I · THE EVIL EYE AND THE SCARING OF GHOSTS.

Still another device, that of dressing up the boy during infancy as a girl, in other words a pretended change of sex, may perhaps lead us on the track of a possible explanation of some very curious and obscure practices in Europe. We know that legends of actual change of sex are not unknown in Indian folk-lore. Thus, we have the very primitive legend of Idâ or Ilâ, who was the daughter of the Manu Vaivaswata, who prayed to Mitra and Varuna for a boy and was given a girl. But the prayers of her father to the deities resulted in her being changed into a man, Sudyumna. Siva changed him back again into a woman, and she, as Ilâ, became the wife of Budha. In more modern times we have the very similar story of the daughter of the Bhadauriya Râja. He had a daughter, who was seized by force for the seraglio of the Emperor at Delhi, but she fled to the temple of Devî at Batesar and by the aid of the goddess was changed into a boy. By another version of the tale he arranged with another Râja that their children should be contracted, if one chanced to be a boy and the other a girl. Both had daughters, but the Râja concealed the circumstance and allowed the marriage to go on as if his child was a son. When the fraud was detected the girl tried to commit suicide in the Jumnâ, but came out a boy, and everyone was satisfied.13